By S. Shriram, Editor-in-Chief | 20th July 2026
Synopsis: A global memory crisis, collapsing carrier partnerships, a high-stakes Apple lawsuit, and a decade of brand dilution have combined to bring down one of the most storied names in premium Android smartphones. OnePlus is exiting the US and Europe now, and India by 2027 — and the fallout for the Indian smartphone trade will be felt for years.
In what is shaping up as one of the most significant brand exits in the history of the Indian smartphone market, OnePlus — the self-styled “flagship killer” sub-brand of Chinese giant Oppo — is expected to wind down its India operations sometime in 2027.
This follows its confirmed withdrawal from the US and Europe markets this week.
Parent company Oppo, formerly Guangdong Oppo Mobile Telecommunications Corporation, has seen its combined global market share slip to 10% as of Q2 2026, down two percentage points year-on-year.
That leaves it ranked a distant fourth in global smartphone shipments behind Samsung (22%), Apple (20%), and Xiaomi.
The collapse has been building for years: OnePlus’s US unit shipments fell from 1 million in 2019 to fewer than 130,000 in 2025 — a near-90% erosion — while its US market share withered from 1.8% in 2021 to a near-invisible 0.1% in 2025.
The trigger at the industry level is a full-blown memory crisis — Low Power Double Data Rate (LPDDR) chip prices for smartphones have surged approximately 250% over the past year as AI data centres consumed NAND flash (Not AND — a type of non-volatile storage memory) and Dynamic Random Access Memory (DRAM) supply globally, making entry-level component costs 20–30% more expensive since early 2025.”
Global smartphone shipments fell 11% year-on-year in Q2 2026, the worst second-quarter performance since 2013, with Oppo, Xiaomi, and Vivo recording double-digit declines; Chinese brands, with thinner margins, have absorbed the shock far more severely than Apple or Samsung.
Compounding matters, T-Mobile terminated its OnePlus carrier partnership in the US in 2023 — critical in a market where carrier channels control 66% of shipments — while a 2025 Apple lawsuit over alleged Apple Watch trade-secret theft added regulatory and injunction risk that made further Western investment untenable.
Realme, Oppo’s other sub-brand, will exit China entirely; OxygenOS and Realme UI are both being phased out, with all three brands migrating to Oppo’s ColorOS, signalling a consolidation of identity rather than just geography.
Editor’s Note
The Indian premium Android segment — the ₹30,000–₹60,000 band where OnePlus has historically punched hardest — is now effectively a contested vacancy.
The race to claim it will be fierce; Samsung, iQOO, and Oppo’s own Find series are already repositioning, but whether any of them can capture the loyalist OnePlus buyer, who values clean software and raw performance over ecosystem lock-in, remains a genuinely open question.
Realme’s fate in India is the subplot worth watching closely.
The brand moved 300 million units globally in its first seven years and remains deeply embedded in Indian value retail.
But with its China home base being shuttered and Oppo consolidating brand architecture under ColorOS, whether Realme survives as an independent identity or gets quietly absorbed into the Oppo mothership could reshape the sub-₹20,000 segment entirely.
And then there is the larger question nobody is asking yet:
If Oppo — ranked fourth in the world and still operationally active — is cutting sub-brands to survive a memory-driven margin crisis, what does that signal for the broader field of Chinese smartphone brands still fighting for relevance in India’s 150-million-unit-per-year market?
and
Are Indian retailers, who have stocked these brands for a decade, prepared for a wave of range rationalisation that nobody has telegraphed to the trade?
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